


Fever Mist

by unxpctedlygreat (Yurika_Schiffer)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fever, Gen, Hallucinations, Set during the 5 years of the timeskip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-24
Updated: 2020-06-24
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:41:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24898600
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yurika_Schiffer/pseuds/unxpctedlygreat
Summary: He follows, as he's always done and until his legs fail him.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Kudos: 22





	Fever Mist

He’s feverish and weak and he knows he should have stopped at the last village he’d crossed. But the boar has to be always moving if he hopes to survive, and so Felix pushes his body to its limits again and again, following trails that lead him to nowhere. Rumors, hearsays, drunk retellings of journeys that mention crossing paths with a beast wearing a man’s disguise.

He’s long stopped caring where precisely he is in the Kingdom, if he’s still in the Kingdom at all. He follows, as he’s always done. As he always should have done. Letting the boar get out of his eyesight was the biggest mistake of his life and he can’t blame anyone for this besides himself.

He could have gone back to Fhirdiad with the prince. His father would have understood, he’s sure, if he had gone with Dimitri to the capital to warn the Grand Duke of the situation. Even beset by his madness, Dimitri had tried to reach out to him before they all separated to go back to their own families.

Even mad with bloodlust and only revenge in his mind, Dimitri had wanted him there.

And Felix had scoffed before going his own way.

He doesn’t think he’ll ever forgive himself for abandoning Dimitri again.

He slumps against a tree when he feels his legs wobbling hard enough to fail him. He doesn’t fancy getting a mouthful of mud should he fall flat on the ground. The sky has been pouring since the dawn came and the forest is difficult to walk in. The mud keeps trying to swallow him whole and he’s glad he didn’t let Sylvain’s teasing make him change his outfit before he left. The thigh-high boots held up much better than he could have hoped.

He lets his head fall back against the trunk and closes his eyes, trying to focus on anything besides the headache that’s been tormenting him for days now. The raindrops that find their way on his face roll down the length of his cheeks and he lets out a feeble laugh when the trail they leave on his skin feel like the tears he’s stopped shedding years ago.

He thinks it would be easy to cry, right here and now. There’s no one to see him give in to weakness, no one to hear him choke on his leftover grief and despair. But even now, exhausted and sick and unable to get back up on his feet, he can’t. He’s not sure if he’s just forgotten how to cry or if his body has a better resolve than his mind.

When he opens his eyes again, mist has risen, blurring the trees around him. He thinks, vaguely, that Sylvain might have found the view impressive. Personally, he just thinks it’s blurry.

He closes his eyes again, the ache behind his brows making it hard to keep his eyes on the landscape. It’s as though his head is detached from his body yet so painfully attached to it. Like he’s swimming in a lake yet crushed under a mountain. He really should have stopped in an inn.

He shifts and lets his head fall forward, wet stray hair sticking to his face. The forest is silent, save for the heavy sound of the downpour. Almost like he’s all alone in the world. To be fair, he’s probably the only fool to be out in such a weather, without a tent or anything to shelter himself.

When he opens his eyes again, he startles at the sight of feet in front of him. Head whipping back up— too quickly, the headache gets worse— he reaches for the sword at his side, cursing himself for letting his guard down.

And then he stills.

Looking down on him isn’t a foe. It isn’t a friend, either, not really.

“... no. Go away,” he snarls, face crunching up in anger— at himself, mostly. He keeps his voice low, unwilling to risk being heard if any soldier is foolish enough to be out in the forest like he is, despite the anger that swells up in his chest.

There’s no reply his words. He didn’t expect one, anyway.

Glenn’s figure stands before him, silent and still like the reflection of a mirror. It’s looking at Felix neutrally, as though Felix is nothing more than a tree among the many others of this forest. It shows no emotion, no feeling and yet, Felix can’t suppress the impression he gets of being judged by its stony blue eyes.

It’s not Glenn, he’s well aware of that. Glenn died five years ago and Felix has made his peace with this. He knows the figure that is borrowing his brother’s face is merely a figment of his own feverish madness. A ghost of some sort that he wouldn’t be seeing had he not pushed his body beyond its limits.

He scrunches his eyes closed and wills his mind to get back on track. No more wraith; he needs to get up and follow the trail he’d been given.

He can’t. His legs refuse to move, his entire body refuses to, actually, so he’s stuck in the mud until exhaustion makes him pass out or he somehow finds energy to move again. With how his day is going, it’s clearly the former that will win.

He looks at the figure again. It hasn’t moved, not that he truly expected it to. It just stares at him. He stares back.

This is Glenn as he looked before leaving with the royal procession for Duscur. The last time he’d seen his brother. The image is unchanged, unmodified. Felix distantly wonders what Dimitri’s own vision of Glenn looks like. If it’s burning, screaming, scarred and bleeding. Maybe that’s why Felix has never had to carry the ghost of his brother like Dimitri does. His own memory of Glenn is unmarred.

Glenn had always kept his hair short, so the illusion has it short as well. Felix remembers asking his brother why he kept cutting his hair, to which Glenn had replied that it was easier to keep out of his face that way. Felix had argued that if the hair was long enough, he could always tie it back but Glenn had only shaken his head with a smile, before ruffling Felix’s hair. Come to think of it, Dimitri’s terrible haircut at the Academy always reminded Felix a little of Glenn’s. Messier than his brother’s had been and giving a definite different look because of their hair colors but… It had been short like this, too.

He shakes his head, willing his brain to stop remembering old memories. It won’t do him any good if he starts reminiscing memories that he’ll never get back. He’s not the boar, he doesn’t dwell in the past. He doesn’t look back and hope things can be as they were before, even though they all know nothing can ever be the same. He’s not the boar.

He sees his brother’s ghost all the same, though, doesn’t he?

But Dimitri’s ghosts speak to him. This one merely stares. It doesn’t speak. Doesn’t make demands.

Felix thinks it doesn’t need to.

“Stop looking at me like this,” he says, looking back down. It won’t make the figure move, he knows. He closes his eyes and lets his head fall back against the trunk once again.

At this point, the image of the wraith is imprinted well enough in his mind that he can picture it behind his closed eyelids. It’s terrible. He doesn’t want to see it.

Dimitri’s ghosts want revenge, or so the prince says. This one is only here to make Felix face his regrets.

Felix despises thinking of what-ifs, despises the idea of wasting time mourning what-could-have-beens. The past is done and gone. No matter how wishful one may be, nothing can ever change the past.

And yet.

And yet a simple fever sways his heart and mind and makes them take that treacherous path.

What if he had tried to help Dimitri, after the rebellion? What if, upon seeing the bloodlust that had overcome his best friend, his dearest friend, he had taken it upon himself to help Dimitri? Would it have made a difference? If he’d talked with Dimitri about it, if they’d cried their hearts out and shared their fears and grief, would it have made a difference? If he had tried to befriend Dedue, rather than pushing him away the way he did Dimitri, could the two of them have helped Dimitri through this?

What if after Remire, when he had seen the prince’s mask start to crack, he had reached out to him and tried to keep Dimitri together when he so obviously began to fall apart? What if— 

It’s pointless. Useless. It won’t bring Dimitri back. He’s not sure anything can bring him back, now. It doesn’t mean he’ll stop trying.

He shakes his head, paying as little mind to his raging headache as he can.

“I’ll find him”, he whispers to the wraith. It’s gone from his eyelids, now. Maybe gone from his sight, if he opened his eyes. It doesn’t matter.

He’ll find Dimitri. He has to. He wants to.

_He needs to._


End file.
